Over the summer Watford Football Club, one of Horizm’s early clients, chose to renew their agreement, extending their use of our digital asset management and monetization tool. We reached out to Owen Arnold, Marketing Manager at the club to get his thoughts on how the relationship had worked over the previous season and his expectations for the season ahead.
Hi Owen, great to speak to you and congratulations once again on your return to the Premier League! We’re delighted that you’ve chosen to renew with Horizm and wanted to see how you found the collaboration over the past year…
What role does digital media play in the Watford’s commercial strategy and how have you use Horizm’s platform to support this over the past 12 months?
Digital has played on increasing important role as part of our overall commercial strategy since our promotion to the Premier League in 2015. This was no more obvious than in the recent 2020/21 season with the effects of COVID. With a lack of matches to fill our digital channels, we were able to experiment with new ideas and carry this forward to last season. This was coupled with the lack of matchday ticketing revenue and the need to maximise revenue in other areas – which led to a switch in primary strategy during our Championship season.
How has Horizm’s platform influenced the way you approach your digital media?
We never had the ability to measure success of our ‘Content Series’ in the past and it’s meant that we were able to change the way we looked at our commercial output on socials. It has allowed us to focus on what does better than others and when and how to maximise exposure to our audiences.
What have been your biggest learnings from using Horizm’s platform?
Performance Scores give us a quick-view metrics to which we can measure success, this also can be said about the ‘gameday’ function which is a useful tool. The Report section allows us to deep dive into demographics of audiences for each of our sponsors – very helpful when talking about our goals and objectives.
How has your use of the tool changed/developed over the first year of the agreement?
New Intelligenz dashboard has been useful to benchmark against other likeminded competitors. Marketplace will be a huge development for us to bring together potential sponsors and our assets to increase revenues.
What were the main reasons behind your decision to renew with Horizm?
Easy to use and well displayed platforms. Our Account Manager, Titus is always very helpful and prompt with replies and requests. The way the platform groups our content series automatically is also a big thing from a time-saving point of view.
What are your expectations of the relationship with Horizm, and what it can do for the club’s digital revenues, over the next 12 months?
Currently the metrics which Horizm provide allows us to pitch to potential sponsors for content but once ‘Marketplace’ has been set up, It’ll enable us to connect brands to our available assets to maximise our social revenues.
For more information on Watford Football Club please go to https://www.watfordfc.com
